


reel around the fountain

by goldenthrone



Series: at night [2]
Category: The Beatles
Genre: 1961, Anal Sex, Domestic, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Nightmares, Oral Sex, Paris - Freeform, Past Child Abuse, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Beatles, Smoking, Smut, THAT paris trip, less depressing than the last one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 12:31:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8372356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenthrone/pseuds/goldenthrone
Summary: Paris, 1961: a place of love, culture and, more importantly, John and Paul in various coffee shops.





	

**Author's Note:**

> hello! it's taken me a disgustingly long time to get this one out, mostly because a. i started year 10 and have a lot of homework and GCSE shit and b. i fell into a wonderful period of creative depression !! anyway i'm quite proud of this one and i hope you enjoy it too. it's less on less of a downer than the last one and actually disgustingly sweet in some parts because i'm a massive sap. a lot of it was written in and around the penny lane/woolton/allerton etc. area which i hope is a good luck charm or something  
> a couple of things: i highly recommend you read wild horses, the first part of this series, before this, otherwise parts won't make much sense. if you don't want to go ahead i guess  
> second please don't forget to check the tags for anything that may be upsetting to you!  
> also check out my title inspiration: reel around the fountain by the smiths, which is a wonderful song  
> enjoy!! i lov you all

John hates the sea. Mostly because it makes him feel slightly ill, a stuffy sort of nausea that clings to him for hours (he’d found that out when he was six and made the mistake of eating a meal on a boat – that had ended up being food for the fish). But something about it, the deceiving grey vastness of it all that you can’t really comprehend stood on a beach, makes him uncomfortable to the point he considered cancelling the entire trip altogether when he found out there’d have to be a boat involved.

And that is how John Lennon’s brain works at eight thirty on a Thursday morning, ladies and gentlemen.

Paul doesn’t seem to be bothered. They’re stood alone on one of the lower decks of the ferry, John stretched out on a bench with a book, Paul leaning over the rail where the sea churns twenty metres or so below them. It’s sliding quickly into November and the temperature is declining fast and the tip of his nose is red despite the shirt, jumper and leathers he’s wearing. He looks like he’s enjoying himself, taking a quick step back every time the freezing sea spray reaches the railing and laughing, kind of like a child discovering something for the first time. John wonders whether he’s ever been on a boat before. Probably not.

“How long d’you reckon now?” Paul asks, turning away from the railing and tucking his hands into his pockets. Normally John’s the one to get a cob on when cooped up in the same place for so long, but they’ve been on the boat for nigh on three hours and even the ever patient Paul is starting to get fidgety.

“I dunno,” John replies, swinging his legs to the floor and stretching as Paul sits down next to him, looking slightly wide-eyed and stunned from the bitter wind. “Half an hour, maybe?”

“Good. I’m sick of the sea,” Paul says decisively and rests his head on John’s shoulder. John does a quick cautionary sweep of the deck out of obligation, something that he doesn’t really think about doing because it’s just so necessary. Curiously, Paul doesn’t seem to care himself – if he wanted to kiss John in public he’d probably do it, just because he’d stopped giving a fuck about it all a long time ago. John stopped being frustrated by him eventually. Now he’s just a little jealous.

Paul lights a cigarette, slightly clumsy through his gloves, and holds it out for John to take a drag. “What’re you reading?”

“Lolita,” John replies around the cig, chuckling. “And since when ‘ave you cared about what I’m reading?”

“Since now.” Paul looks indignant. It doesn’t suit him, rather makes him look like an angry puppy and only serves to make John smile again. “Isn’t it about a paedophile, though? I knew you were kinky but that’s a stretch, even for you.”

“He ain’t a _pedophile,”_ John insists, sighing. He’d already had this conversation with Mimi, who’d caught him with it (minding his own bloody business in the back garden, it’s worth mentioning). She’d immediately started off on a tangent and ultimately banned him from reading it, so he’d had to save it to take it with him here. She’d called the main character a pervert and John had almost grimaced at the word. He’d spent a good year or so repeating that word in his head every night as he fell asleep as if thinking about it might make the meaning change. “He’s a troubled soul.”

Paul huffs out a laugh. “You should write poetry.”

Fifteen minutes or so later John’s prediction proves to be true and the blurry shore of France appears on the horizon. Paul, once again oddly excited by the whole proceedings, drags John back inside the port with an urgency that John thinks is a little unfounded in the whole situation, so impatient they nearly forget their bags. He’s not complaining, though; the seasickness was just starting to set in.

France is not really different to England. John’s been a few times before and is constantly disappointed by, well, pretty much everything. Their beaches are still cold and windy and wet like Blackpool or Brighton or somewhere like that, only with more ‘hon-hon’s and ‘baguette’ing, and the only real upside is duty free booze. Still, Paul seems over the moon, and insists on exploring the quaint little French town they’ve arrived in for a while rather than starting the hitchhike to Paris.

“You speak better French than me,” Paul says as they’re walking down a street filled with distressed brickwork and peeling wooden signs that would look overdone and out of place in England but just fit in here. “Translate something. That’d be right romantic.”

“I did five years of French an’ I was asleep for half of that.” John squints at the passing signs, but they’re just blurs. “I ain’t got my specs either, ‘ave I?”

“Well that’s your fault,” Paul replies, feigning a huff and crossing his arms over his chest melodramatically. “I tell you, son, when all the other girls come to France their boyfriends are there spoutin’ fluent French an’ all that shite, and you ‘aven’t even proposed underneath the Eiffel Tower yet.” The fact that Paul appears to have forgotten that he’s not a teenage girl too almost sends John into a fit of giggles, and his suppressed laughs just send Paul further into his imaginary mood. He’s a very good actor when it comes down to it, and the venomous glare he gives John out of the corner of his eye would probably send any other lad running for the hills.

“Now then, mardarse,” John says, forcing himself to keep a straight face, while the hint of a smile starts to show past the feigned irritation on Paul’s face. “I’m payin’ for this whole bloody fiasco out of me own pocket. I’ll ‘ave little more respect from you.”

“I’ll show you respect,” Paul says very quietly to the floor, strained laughter evident in his voice, and then they’re laughing at how stupid the whole situation is while affronted French old women tut about them from behind their shop curtains. John wonders how much more affronted they’d be if they knew how close to the real thing their little roleplay is.

-

They get on the road to Paris eventually, after Paul’s ‘absorbed enough culture’ and they’d been into just about every little shop in the town, selling everything from expensive cheeses to tacky touristy shit to stacks of bizarre Austrian pornos. Paul had insisted on having lunch sat on the beach because he’s stupidly romantic like that, and while John had teased him and called him soft several times it’d secretly been the best part of the day, watching Paul laugh with his flushed wind-stung cheeks and the turned up collar of his leather jacket pulled up to his chin. John tucks the image away in the little folder in his mind designated for moments like these.

After waiting at the side of a busy motorway for a good twenty minutes with their stupid gimmicky bowler hats on and all of their possessions in two little duffels they’re finally picked up. Their lifter is a German truck driver with his burly mate sat in the passenger seat, looking a lot like some of the boat drivers from the docks that throw bottles at the kids they find vandalising their barges. While neither of them mention it, other obvious comparisons can be drawn, as they so often are around men like this. John notices the slight loss of colour in Paul’s cheeks and he’s very quiet while John trades his hesitant German for their broken English.

The back of the truck is full of cardboard boxes with German scribbled all over them. Mostly they’re carrying fruit and other foodstuffs but John’s pretty sure there’s probably an organ donation or two back there. Paul has leant himself against a box that is apparently full of _Kirchen,_ which John’s sure either means cherries or churches. Hopefully it’s the former.

“You reckon we’ll be in Paris by morning?” Paul asks, letting his head drop back on the box and stretching out his long legs. Once again he seems to be assuming that John knows everything about the geography of France despite the fact that he got Cs in both subjects.

“Not now they’ve got your weight in the back.”

“Shut up.” Paul smiles tiredly and cricks his neck. “By Christ, was getting up at four am worth it?” he complains through a yawn and John is reminded how tired he himself is, despite the fact that it’s only five in the afternoon. The dull thrumming of the engine and even sway of the flat highway aren’t helping and a nap seems in order (as it always does to John). He holds the lapel of his jacket out for Paul who ducks under it gratefully, burrowing into John in that strange way he does, like he’s trying to get under his skin.

“Bloody cold back here.” Paul nods in agreement and hums, although he sounds content more than uncomfortable. “I should tell ‘em to take us to Spain instead.”

“Nah, too many Mariachi bands. I hate Mariachi bands.”

“That’s Mexico, you twit.”

Paul huffs a laugh and yawns again, eyes closing, and John has to stop himself obeying to the untimely urge in his brain telling him to snog him up against a wall or something. “Same thing. They’re both shit at football.”

After a little while the small amount of light that had been filtering through the gap under the door is extinguished and Paul is asleep against John’s shoulder, mouth slightly ajar and hands finally still, not tapping or fiddling with something like they usually are. A Gene Vincent song runs through John’s mind as he stares into the backs of his eyelids, listening to the slow, steady sound of Paul’s breaths and the faint laughter coming from the driver’s compartment. It’s dark and edging into frostbite-inducing cold, but wrapped in a jacket and pressed against Paul it’s certainly tolerable.

-

Really, John should know from experience that the Germans are changeable. He hadn’t even been doing anything wrong – unless you counted eating maybe _one_ punnet of cherries and failing to conceal the evidence when being checked up on as wrong. Getting thrown out of a truck onto the arctic Parisian roadside by two six foot five German blokes wasn’t really on the agenda for the trip, but variety is the spice of life if you ask John. Which nobody is. Paul’s too busy scowling at his half open bag where it’s lying on the floor as if the sheer force of his glare will make it levitate out of the puddle it’s been chucked into.

“That was rude,” he declares, suddenly jumping into action and swiping up his bag, pulling a disgusted face as it drips. John watches with mild amusement as he starts trying to wipe the muddy water off of the bottom with his sleeve, like you might watch a dog chasing its tail. “I could’ve had anything in here.”

“Paul, you’re a nineteen year old Scouser with holes in your trousers,” John replies dryly and Paul turns his scowl in his direction, although he looks more put out than angry, and glances self-consciously at the small hole in one knee of his drainies. “What’re you gonna ‘ave that’s worth anythin’?” Paul opens his mouth like he might retort but decides against it and looks at the ground dejectedly, zipping up the bag and slinging it over his back. Apparently he’s given up trying to dry it off and is content with a damp arse instead. “You’re just upset cause them dirty Austrian pornos got wet.”

“That’s a lie, Lennon,” Paul starts, a blush rising on his cheeks, and John shrugs and looks disbelieving just to make him squirm. He starts to walk towards the tall shapes of Paris in the distance, thanking his lucky stars they weren’t dropped in the middle of some remote French countryside, and ignores Paul’s slowly more explicit protests behind him.

-

It’s eleven in the morning and the room service to their stuffy little hostel room is late. Paul’s stretched out on the bed in nothing but his boxer shorts, lounging in the warm ray of morning sunlight beaming in from the gap in the hotel curtains like a cat, his head hanging off of the edge as he watches John draw lazily. Briefly John lets his eyes flicker over the long, bare plane of his stomach and the accommodating hollow of his throat, pale and illuminated by the sun. He almost looks like a painting, done by one of them masters, all sharp and focused through glasses, and John sits up a little straighter to conceal the sort of stiffy that’s popped up from nowhere.

Paul smiles slightly, noticing where John’s looking, and tilts his head to the side, before rolling over and propping his chin up on his hand.

“You reckon we could shag before room service comes?”

The question almost takes John by surprise and he raises an eyebrow, sitting forward on his knees. His sloppy sketch of Paul lays discarded, half under the desk, but John won’t miss it (Paul’s eyes are so tricky to nail). “We could try,” he suggests with a wolfish sort of grin – one of his specialities – and Paul returns a smirk of his own.

“Come ‘ead, then,” Paul says with a wink, and John’s shuffling over on his knees at the speed of light.

Paul always seems to taste vaguely like rum and coke, even when they’re in France and he’s just done his teeth. But John’s not complaining, because all in all Paul is an excellent kisser, even though John’s not really sure where he learnt it from and it’s slightly uncomfortable with one of them on the bed and the other kneeling on the floor.

Making a little cut off sound into John’s mouth, Paul nudges his shoulder with a free hand. “Hang on a sec, get- get on the bed, you daft-” He breaks off as John climbs up onto the mattress, fingers already sliding under the waistband of his own, noticeably tight trousers in an effort to get them off. Watching John’s movements, Paul makes another short, desperate sound, a ‘hurry up and fuck me’ sound which goes straight to John’s dick and for a second he pauses and revels in the electricity that slides down his spine, like someone’s run a feather down his back. He’s still very much considering trying to record those noises, although he’s not entirely sure what he’d do with them. They’d be good wanking material, top notch, miles better than the slightly frayed polaroids he’s got tucked furtively into the slats of his bed. He’d play himself to sleep every night, maybe. Incorporate them into a song, under the guitars and that, so that when people listen to it they’re blissfully unaware that those little snatches of vocals they’re hearing are the bassist moaning over a dick in his arse.

Paul doesn’t seem to care for thinking about wanking and would much rather be actively doing it instead. His dexterous pianist’s fingers are undoing John’s shirt buttons with practiced ease, before they’re trailing down his bare torso and slipping into his boxers, pulling them down his thighs.

“Fuck,” John manages, head lolling back on his shoulders, white sparks already dancing around the edge of his vision. God, he’d been ready for this, ready for a hand around his cock, Paul’s hand, and, oh, Paul’s lips, as it seems, mouthing wetly at the bit of his stomach above his dick. Paul pauses and John’s eyes flick down to where Paul’s looking back up at him, mouth just barely open, lips slick and lashes dark around his stupid girl’s eyes. He’s giving John such a pointed look, a look that screams ‘are you ready?’ and the warmth of him is hovering just an inch above John’s crotch, and fucking Christ he has to look back up at the ceiling and think about his old Aunt Josephine not to just come right then.

“Jesus, Paul, get on with it,” he gasps when he’s sure he can’t wait a second more and then Paul’s in action, hand coming to rest on John’s thigh and fingernails digging in just a little, enough to make John suck a surprised little breath in through his teeth. He licks a broad stripe up John’s cock, and then another, hand tightening slightly, and that’s it, John’s gone, all trains of thought derailed and replaced by a low ringing in his ears. His elbows give out and then he’s lying flat on his back as Paul takes him fully into his mouth, his teeth scraping lightly over skin.

“Fuck, fuck- Jesus, Paul, love your mouth so fucking much-”

Paul hums and John cuts off his mindless babble to make a very undignified noise in return, and then another when he feels Paul’s lips turn into a smile. Involuntarily he bucks upwards because by now all inhibitions have been thrown to the wind and Paul takes it perfectly, head bobbing, and that’s honestly probably the best thing about it all. It’s what makes Paul’s blowjobs the best John’s ever had because he never stops, never chokes, and it’s something John wouldn’t anticipate to be sexy but somehow is. Add that to the extensive list of fucked up things John Lennon finds arousing.

By now Paul’s got a rhythm going, head moving up and down in accordance with John’s stuttered thrusts, little satisfied noises escaping his throat every now and again to match John’s louder ones, eyes fluttering closed. Vaguely John’s aware of Paul’s other hand going down to his crotch to palm his own erection. The younger boy falters a little, moans what could be an incoherent curse, and maybe that’s what does it for John, that image of Paul’s eyes shut in pleasure, face slack as he rubs one out through his underwear while he’s got _John’s fucking dick_ in his mouth. The white hot heat in his groin seems to become unbearable for a split second and then he’s coming, all the tension in his body unknotting, like he’s a ball of string being unravelled, with the tight sensation of Paul swallowing around his cock somewhere below him.

The heat of Paul’s mouth disconnects and they lie there for a few moments, Paul’s sweaty face pressed to John’s equally sweaty stomach and their breathing coming fast and hot. John loves the feeling after an orgasm, the strung-out, sticky silence as they catch their breath, and he can’t help but drink in the way Paul looks, flushed pink and exhausted and beautiful in a twisted way that manages to avoid being erotic somehow.

Paul shifts and rolls off of John onto the bed next to him, shimmying up so their faces are level. “You’re fantastic,” he says lazily, still a little breathless, and flings an arm over his head.

“I bet I’d be even more fantastic if I returned the favour,” John replies and gives him a weak attempt of a sultry grin. Paul returns a knowing smile and props himself up on the headboard, slipping out of his boxers and kicking them off the bed somewhere. Could be out the window for all John cares.

-

“Vous avez un belle derriere.”

“Aye, really? What’s that mean?”

“…you’ve got beautiful eyes.”

-

As much as Paul likes to ignore them, the nightmares still come and go. They arrive in waves, like a tide washing up debris on the shore before dragging it back out to sea again, but it’s always unexpected and there’s nothing John hates more than waking up to Paul shaking and white with tears on his face. He tends to pride himself on being unflappable but there’s something about patient, collected Paul reduced to this ghost of a person, hands trembling so violently he can’t hold anything and mouth forming silent pleas. It just- it fucks John up. And the worst thing is he can’t do much but sit there like a fucking useless cow and watch and say equally useless shit like “it’s fine, you’re safe, you’re okay, it’s all okay” when he knows it’s not, and Paul won’t be for a long time.

“I’m sorry,” Paul says while they’re sat in the dark, leaning into each other and listening to the car horns on the streets outside. He’s still half shaking and making these little sniffs that make John certain that he never wants to let him go, ever. “I fuck everything up. We’re on fuckin’ holiday.”

A sudden swell of something like anger rises in John’s chest, and he takes one of Paul’s wrists between his hands, squeezing just tight enough to be firm but not painful. Paul looks at him curiously, big eyes translucent in the thin light seeping in through the curtains and the tears clinging to his eyelashes catching and glimmering like little pearls. “Listen to me, yeah, Macca?” John says quietly, some sort of righteous fury humming in his veins and showing through so slightly in his voice, and Paul nods. “You don’t ever – _ever –_ apologise for what he did to you, okay?”

Another sniff, and Paul looks at the bedspread. “Yeah.”

“Good.”

A beat of silence passes and Paul picks at a loose thread in his shirt. A nervous tick. “I- I hate this,” he says in this tiny, uncertain voice, so quietly John only just hears it, but when he does it’s almost as if Paul had screamed it. It’s like someone’s twisting the guilty knife in John’s gut – _should have been there for him, should have realised sooner, should have killed that old bastard while you had the chance –_ and he can’t find it in himself to do anything more than gather Paul up in his arms like he’s trying to keep him from falling apart and hold him, tears pricking at his own eyes. Maybe it’s for his own benefit, to remind himself that Paul’s still there, still sticking around, still sat in a hotel bed in France with John despite all the ways John’s failed him, but Paul goes lax and lets himself be held. God, John wonders how queer they must look right now; two practically naked boys cuddling in a bed crying, and while he might feel just a touch of self-consciousness any other time he couldn’t care less at this precise moment.

In his arms, Paul takes a deep breath and the faintest smile pulls at his mouth for a second. John feels like he’s helping, just a bit.

-

“Cor, s’brass fuckin’ monkeys tonight.”

It really is. Even John would admit that through his coat and gloves the bitter cold makes his skin prickle and eyes water, and Paul looks like he might as well have icicles hanging from his nose. Up on the second level of the Eiffel Tower it’s like the Arctic circle and whoever told John that France has better weather than England is, quite frankly, a traitor and a liar and should be shot at dawn.

“Can say that again,” Paul agrees, flicking back a stray piece of hair that’s fallen into his eyes, and exhales a spidery cloud of smoke into the wind. He looks good, John can’t help but notice; his miles and miles of legs are still in their usual drainies but he’s got a mock-tweed jacket on over a red jumper and his hair is swept up in a careless greased peak that somehow looks better than the styles he spends hours on. He’s also wearing the glasses that make an appearance once in a blue moon to remedy slight short-sightedness, and the warm-orange dots of light over Paris reflect off them like points of candlelight. John never thought he’d go for the sexy professor look, but then again he never imagined himself going for boys in any way, shape or form before he met Paul. Things change.

A couple of girls are hanging around a few feet away from them, giggling and smoking their own cigarettes, all rouged cheeks and Doris Day blonde waves. They’ve been standing there for a good ten minutes now, too long to be minding their own business and indicative that they wouldn’t mind a double date of sorts – if the not so subtle batting of eyelashes and hair flipping didn’t give that away to John sooner.

Any other day he’d go for it, and he knows Paul would too. They’re both proper gorgeous, crackers, petite with perfect curves and just the right amount of cleavage showing, and John would be hesitant to give up bedding a French girl anyway. But a quick glance back at Paul tells him that the other boy is completely oblivious to them, still smoking away happily and facing the sprawling network of Paris in front of the tower, and suddenly something in him can’t bear even to look back at the girls. He can’t deal with something like that, something soft and svelte and curvy and overly feminine, when he’s got Paul stood in front of him with his five o’clock shadow and half an inch height over John, even without his boots on. Paul, who’s got the eyes and the lips for it but could never be a girl, could probably pass for one with makeup and low lighting but couldn’t ever truly convince anyone when it really got down to it. Something like guilt, even maybe revulsion, starts to creep over John’s shoulders, something stupid and unfounded – of course he’s allowed to like girls. But how could he even consider it, even start to compare those little blonde waifs, all sickly perfume and shallowness, against Paul when he’s stood a foot away, still pliant from a shag, dark hair spilling over his forehead and decidedly masculine jawline shadowed in the low lights? It’s like hanging a child’s scribble up next to a Picasso.

“C’mon, let’s go somewhere else.” The tinge of spite in John’s voice isn’t lost on Paul, and he glances over his shoulder as John guides him away with a firm hand on his lower back. John imagines the girls’ faces going sour, their stupid makeup caked features distorting with the sting of rejection until they’re beyond beauty, and responds to Paul’s questioning glance with a smile. “Can’t see much up here anyway.”

-

They barely make it three hours after leaving the tower, ducking into a small, dimly lit bar which Paul had taken a fancy to. He’d claimed that to get the authentic experience of a city you had to disregard the popular tourist traps and visit lesser known places instead (read: get dirty looks from snooty bartenders and encounter some of the most utterly crap toilets on the face of earth).

When John had finally dragged him away, insisting that the clubs in the centre of the city looked “ _less, well… fucking shit”_ they’d found a garishly lit up pub in the centre with neon signs advertising all kinds of drinks in English, no less.

After a few drinks Paul’d loosened up, and after his sixth he’d engaged himself in slurred but earnest conversation with some American tourist – “Oh, you’re _English_? Are you from _London_?” John, still on his third pina colada, had watched in interest. After Paul had become convinced that the poor bloke, slightly bewildered both by the accent and the amount of alcohol seemingly disappearing into thin air, knew Elvis, he’d had to draw the line, and anyway Paul had moved onto straight whiskey and even the bartender was looking alarmed.

“Come off it, you, we’re goin’ home.” Paul makes a childish noise as John tries to haul him off his stool, and the American smiles weakly at John before shuffling off. “A wonder you ‘aven’t keeled over dead yet.”

“Nah, Johnny, you ‘in’t even drunk! No fun bein’ drunk on your own.”

John weighs up Paul’s argument briefly. He’s only pleasantly tipsy, verging on a little unsteady, and the room isn’t even spinning. The bill should be well over a few quid now and it’s only nine, and only a lightweight would retire before ten, really. And if John’s anything, he’s not a lightweight. Seven or eight years of drinking’s ensured that, along with a dose of Northern blood.

“Go on, then. But no more whiskey for you.” Paul starts to protest again and John pushes a bright red drink in front of him, the sight of which apparently disgusts him so much he shuts up pretty quick. “Be a good boy and drink your daiquiri.”

In the end they’re back in the hotel room in an hour and a half. Even that’s not impressive - the process of finding a taxi that would even stop for two drunk English blokes with five slurred words of French between them had taken twenty minutes in itself. To top it off the receptionist at the hotel apparently had a ten foot rod up her arse and refused to let them into their room without proof of their identities. John, completely without any driver’s license or ID card, had had to negotiate with an extremely disorientated Paul for his moped license as the receptionist watched with a thin-lipped expression. Of course she’d secretly enjoyed it, sat there stone cold sober at eleven thirty. Probably the only entertainment she got – no boyfriend, no time for that around long nights sat in this dismal little lobby glaring at folk. John’s sure her cunt’s drier than the Sahara. Or maybe that’s the rum talking.

Eventually this bitch gets off her high horse and shoos them upstairs, looking like she’d just bitten a lemon. Paul smiles vacantly at her over his shoulder.

“Thanks a fucking lot, love!” John shouts, just loud enough for the people walking past outside to hear, and she says something French in reply that would probably start a fight if John could be bothered to lift a fist above his elbow. He ain’t above hitting girls if they’re twats like that.

-

There’s a late night run of West Side Story on the boxy little television set, and of course Paul had insisted on watching it, squashing them both into the patchy armchair in front of the screen. Despite his pitiful state he’s still surprisingly tuneful, singing along quietly with his daiquiri sweet breath on John’s cheek. The warmth of him perched in John’s lap is comforting, and John falls asleep minutes after Paul does as Natalie Wood trills on in the background.

Of course, he regrets everything come morning and his head and his back are holding a competition to see which can cause him the most grief.

“M’never touching whiskey again, hear me?” Paul is prone on the bed, bin just beside him on the floor. He looks like he’s just been shot. “You ever see me with whiskey, you slap it right out of my hand. Don’t care if it’s Glenfiddich ’27, I’ll thank you in the morning.”

“Will do,” John replies weakly, stretched out on the floor, and chuckles as Paul goes for the bin again.

-

“Right. River Seine. Rating out of ten?”

“Ah, seven. S’nice an’ all, but it’s a bit wet.”

“Yeah, an’ I ain’t feeling the whole ‘river of love’ vibe, are you?”

“Not unless you want me to.”

“Not unless the twenty other people on this boat want you to, you mean.”

-

Paul is bored. John knows because he’s humming, just audible over the noise of the coffee shop, staring off amicably at the near distance. It’s not a song that John recognises, which means he’s making one up. And Paul only composes when he’s got nothing else to do. It’s almost like he enters a little space in his mind, a little room full of draws stuffed with melodies, and emerges with a song. John’s not going to deny he’s a bit jealous of that trick.

“You’re composing,” John observes over his coke. Silly word, he realises, almost like Paul’s writing a sonata or something.

Paul’s preoccupied gaze darts back to John, and he nods silently, as if not to disrupt his chain of thought/melody. Suddenly John can’t help but smile a little at his faraway expression. Paul can lose himself in music in a way that John can’t, a way that sometimes encapsulates him so entirely he often gets stuck in it.

“You ever wonder what it’d be like if we never met?” Paul says without warning, looking at John intently with those big, dark eyes. John sits backwards on his chair, almost as if the weight of the question had pushed him back. “If I went off down south with me ma or summat?”

“Cor, it’d be brilliant.” John grins to let Paul know he’s joking and takes another mouthful of suddenly oversweet coke. Drawing a cig from his pocket, Paul raises his eyebrows as if to say ‘try me’ and rests an elbow on the table in mock interest. “But alas, I must put up with you stealing my money and my plectrums too.”

Paul laughs, but then his face suddenly turns serious again. The look doesn’t suit him, never has; his soft features reach peak attractiveness when he’s smiling or gasping in pleasure. “If me da… y’know…” He lets the sentence trail off into uncomfortable silence, cigarette forgotten on the table, and clears his throat. “If I decided not to go to Woolton fete. What’d you be doing? Really?”

 _I don’t know,_ John wants to say. It’s almost the truth.

Some sort of strange anxiety is wrapping itself around his insides so he forces a smile and snags one of Paul’s chips from his plate just to break the silence. “Wouldn’t be doing much, really, would I?”

“Still be playing uke chords,” Paul replies with a grin, that switch flipping and the serious tone of his voice gone.

-

John’s not a stranger to suddenly finding the right thing to say in a conversation hours after the moment has ended, or the answer to an exam question when it’s no longer needed; like a birthday card being posted on a slow service and arriving days after the occasion.

The answer to Paul’s question in the coffee shop comes unexpectedly to him – slightly inconvenient, since he’s got Paul’s hips moving in his hands and legs around his waist. Christ, Paul’s so good, so much better than anyone, any _girl_ John’s ever fucked, so much tighter and more responsive. There’s something about him, something beyond words that John can only really sense when they’re as close as this, all sticky and bare and pressed up against one another. When he fucks Paul, he’s not fucking some warm, wet hole, not like with Cynthia or the other girls back home – it’s still Paul somehow, it’s his best mate, his bandmate, his nightmare-having, bass-playing Paul. John can’t lose the essence of him in the moment. He doesn’t want to.

_‘What’d you be doing?’_

Playing music, probably. Covers, mostly, Elvis and the like, too scared to write his own songs, and watching the other Mersey bands shoot to the top of the charts with their own material. He certainly wouldn’t be playing to roaring crowds in Germany or to adoring regulars at the Cavern. Of course, there’d be fights; he’d be wallowing in bitterness over his mother’s death without a cushion to fall back on or someone to relate to. He’d be kissing girls. Taking them home, shagging them into the mattress, and telling his mates how good they were, how fantastic the sex was. Slipping hands up skirts and into lacy knickers and, come morning, kicking out birds with declarations of love and big, wet eyes. Missing out on everything. On what he’s got here in the bed with him.

What would it be like? Pretty shit. And John wouldn’t even know it.

-

“Three days left.”

“Indeed.” The prospect of going home is far more daunting to John than he’d expected. It’s not the weather he’s dreading, or the food, it’s the strings that come attached with living around people who you’ll have to see more than once. Liverpool might as well be Alcatraz after the freedom of a foreign country.

Beside him Paul seems to be having the same thoughts and his face has taken on that all-too-familiar blank look that he gets when he’s thinking too hard. “England… s’all a bit crap, really, isn’t it?”

“Careful, they’d ‘ave you hanged if you said that back home.”

Once again Paul goes quiet and John’s reminded of a breathy period drama with all these dramatic pauses. It’s getting on for nine and tonight’s pub, a thoroughly overpriced touristy place John’d chosen specifically to piss Paul off, is starting to bustle with holiday-makers. Paul seems in the mood to get drunk again but John’s pretty sure a repeat of the other night would prompt at least someone out of the milling crowd to call the police, and as funny as that would be, John’s not looking for a repeat of the Hamburg cells.

“Thanks for this,” Paul says, turning on his seat to face John, nudging John’s hand with his own. He’s smiling, that smile that comes out when he really means it, not the one he wears when he’s taking the mick or when he’s drunk, or the nasty, gloating one he used to put on around Stu. “It’s been shitty, _I’ve_ been kind of shitty before, and- this is nice. Thanks.”

“Christ, you goin’ soft on me?” John replies past the warm feeling in his chest, and a mischievous grin creeps across Paul’s face as he links a finger with John’s.

“You’re the one who brought me to _Paris_ in the first place, son.”

“You rather I didn’t, then?”

“What are you on? I’ve ‘ad some of the best sex of my whole life here!”

John can’t stifle an unattractive cackle at that and gets a funny look from a girl on the other side of the bar. He bristles inwardly – she’d been looking at him sideways for longer than socially acceptable, and when John had given her a subtle ‘don’t go there’ look, she’d moved on to Paul instead. He gives himself a second to click his tongue and think some nasty words before Paul’s all raised eyebrow and half-smile, judging him over his pint.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Just Plain Jane over there lookin’ at you like you’re a prime cut of meat,” he replies, civil but with more than a little venom in his voice. Paul’s little smile widens, and he glances over at the girl, who’s by now gone a bit red and is looking intently at a barmat.

“Never really gone for blondes,” he says, laughing, and the lights catch in his eyes and illuminate them so they glow like whiskey. A sudden swell of possessiveness rises in John’s chest, and if he were with Cyn and it was another man looking her up he might put his tongue down her throat. Y’know, marking his territory an’ all. It took him a while to get used to it around Paul, especially in Hamburg where women were plentiful and plenty willing and Paul was high and an easy catch. The feeling he’d get when he saw Paul against a wall with a girl’s dainty little hands shoved in his back pockets seemed to crawl under his skin for hours. It was painful. He’d spend hours irritable and restless, waiting for Paul to turn up again like he was his little pet fucking dog, imagining this girl and what her hands were doing at that precise moment and wondering whether Paul was enjoying her, perhaps enjoying her more than he did John, and would Paul even want to come back? What if he did come back, but he didn’t want anything to do with John anymore? What if he’d suddenly realised how wrong, how perverted it all was, and couldn’t even look at John-

And then Paul would come back and drag John backstage and kiss him behind the amps. And they’d exchange pleasantries, _any good then? not as good as you, Johnny, why’d you ask? oh, just wondering._ And John would take Paul to the room and fuck him, quiet and muffled and so, so good, because it was _his_ hands on Paul’s dick and _his_ mouth on Paul’s neck, not some nameless little German sow.

“John?”

Back to base. John’s eyes dart up from where they’d drifted off to settle somewhere in the distance. “Yeah? Sorry, just thinking.”

“Careful, you might hurt yourself.”

“Oi. Shut it, you.”

Paul flips John the v from under the table and drains the last of his pint. He’s getting that rosy tint to his cheeks that tells John he’s halfway-drunk already, but before the bartender can swoop in John stands, fishing a handful of coins from his pocket.

“C’mon. We should go to a club,” he says decisively. He’s sick of this place and the girl across the bar and the stupid outdated European music. “I saw a good one jus’ down the road?”

Paris streets are a special kind of foreign. They’re all lit up with orange streetlamps and the tiny twinkling fairy lights in shop windows, so it’s all soft and dim and sappy, and the cobbled pavements are covered in a layer of autumn leaves. Their boots make funny little muffled clicking sounds as they walk, mixing in with the sounds of pubs and the occasional car slushing through the puddles. The roadsigns are devoid of dents or paint, not like back home, and the quaint little street names make John feel like he’s straight out of Lord of the Rings. If they were, well, not queer, they might be holding hands or something, standing under a lamp and cuddling or shit. John thinks about holding Paul’s hand but it just makes something dull ache in his solar plexus.

“It’s called _Infini_.”

They click past a garishly painted corner store and Paul nudges his shoulder against John’s amicably. He does stuff like that a lot. John thinks it’s for the reassuring contact more than anything else. “Funny how clubs still have awful names over here, innit?”

“Awful is universal,” John replies, and for the first time he can hear the alcohol on his voice. He wonders briefly if there was more gin than tonic in what he’d been drinking all evening, and by his arm Paul loses his footing on the cobbles, swaying dangerously. They’re probably beginning to look like drunks to the locals.

Paul laughs and sniffs, blowing into his hands in a vain effort to warm them. It’s suddenly dipped beyond cold. “Yeah. S’funny, this morning I-”

“Hey!”

Paul’s cut off abruptly by an accented shout and the approaching smack of heeled shoes against pavement. For a second he looks disorientated, mirroring the sluggish process of John’s brain, and then he’s whipped around with a reflexive swiftness born of something John’s not going to think about.

“Hey, you!”

Finally, John turns. Two figures are clattering down the street behind them, eyes glinting and coats out behind them like silhouetted wings under the streetlight glow, and something clicks in John’s brain. Some fight or flight instinct sets alight in the dark recesses of his subconscious, and Paul’s hand is tight around his wrist all of a sudden. John’s always been good at predicting a barney and alarm bells are ringing so loud he feels he might go deaf. 

“Got a problem, lads?” His voice sounds alien to him. He glances over at Paul, who’s still got an iron grip around his wrist and wide, wide eyes, staring blankly in the direction of the strangers. “Can we ‘elp you?”

The taller and faster of the two skids to a halt. His hands are in tight fists by his side. A gold band glints on one finger. He cracks his knuckles; John’s blood freezes in his veins and ice cold anticipation spiders through his shoulders. He shouldn’t be excited.

“Vous-” the man starts hesitantly, still catching his breath, as his friend arrives behind him, puffing like a steam train. This one’s shorter, but stockier, and John regards the pull of his biceps at his shirt doubtfully. John’s achingly sober, already weighing up the fight, where they’re weaker and where he’d have no chance against them, how he can go in alone against two of them and come out vaguely alright – previous fights have told him that Paul mostly likes to avoid conflict, especially the physical type.

The taller one turns to Paul, the arching stance of his body more than a little threatening, and John feels Paul tense suddenly. “You-“ he struggles for words, and Paul glances at John desperately, “slut!”

John can’t help the laugh that spills out of his mouth, his mind desperately trying to take the edge off of the situation, and Paul’s grip relaxes slightly on his wrist, although he’ still deathly pale. The shorter one doesn’t seem to find it funny and takes a menacing step forward.

John ignores him. “Listen, mate, I think you’ve got the wrong person-”

“Non!” the tall one interjects forcefully, so much so it shuts John up quickly. “Il était- my wife!”

“Uh-”

“My wife- Emilé!”

If possible, Paul goes even whiter. John watches him out of the corner of his eye and tries to remember who Emilé is. A vague, faded picture of a small brunette perched on a barstool flashes through his mind, and then nothing – just drunken static. Unfortunately, something about the way Paul’s biting his lip tells John that he remembers her, and all too well.

A nervous smile flits onto Paul’s face. “I’m sorry an’ all, but I ‘aven’t a clue who you’re on about,” he says, words clear with one of those unexpected spurts of confidence he gets in moments like these. It’s odd – he’ll be locked up, frozen with fright, and then one of those charming grins will appear out of nowhere, and the right things to say will spout of him non-stop, and he’ll leave having gained friends instead of lost them. See, John’s more likely to sneer and say everything precisely and completely wrong, and earn himself a slap. He wonders if he should ask Paul how he does it someday and whether it would just go over his head.

However, on this occasion Paul’s magic seems to have fallen flat. The tall one’s gone so red he may well be a fire hazard, and the short one has that all-too-familiar look on his face, the one John himself gets when he’s full of beer and feeling insulted.

“Liar!” the tall one spits, lurching forward suddenly, and Paul makes a tiny, abortive gesture as if to hide behind John. “You-”

His English fails him again and he curses in French for a second, before the shorter one jumps in with an enthusiastic- “cheat!”

“Oui!” the tall one agrees with gusto, nodding violently, and makes a fist in Paul’s face. John feels a sudden surge of anger, raw and sudden and fiercely protective. How dare he? How dare he even have the bollocks to even _look_ in Paul’s direction, let alone _threaten_ him?

“Hey, hey, whoa, you little surrender monkey,” he says, positioning his foot carefully between Paul and the Frenchman, who looks down his nose at John like he’s a stain on a carpet. “Let’s not do anything we might regret, aye?”

“He- cheat- my wife-” the Frenchman repeats venomously. He stops short, apparently deciding that words aren’t the right way to convey his meaning, draws his fist back like a piston, and punches Paul square in the face.

Something odd happens to John in that split second. White fills his vision to the corners like an oil spill, a violent, compelling sort of white, and fire burns between his shoulder blades. He feels like if he doesn’t do something about it he’ll explode. He gets a glimpse of the Frenchman’s retreating back, but still his fist has made contact with skin before he knows what’s happening. He gets in another punch, this one more successful by the grunt it gains, and then the right side of his face is exploding with pain, and tiny multi-coloured stars are skittering across the white, confetti on snow, and someone’s telling him to stop behind him, and there’s flesh under his knuckles and impact on his face again, and there’s a hand on his shoulder and how _dare_ he, how fucking dare he lay a single fucking finger on Paul, that fucking _bastard_ -

“Hey, buddy, let’s calm it down,” someone unfamiliar is saying in his ear. The hand on his shoulder squeezes and slips down towards his elbow.

“Fucking let go,” he fumes without thinking, thrashing forward, and the hand on his elbow becomes two more on his shoulders. The fog is clearing and the glaring streetlight glow invades his vision. “Gonna fucking bash his teeth in-”

“John.” Paul’s voice.

_Fuck._

John lets his fists uncurl. The whiteness seeps away, receding like melting snow, and the blurry shape of Paul appears next to him like an apparition.

“Come on,” Paul says quietly. The blood on his face glimmers orange. “Let’s go home.”

-

The sky seethes, pulses blue and grey and heavy all over the horizon and rumbles grandly every now and again like faraway bombs. The Seine, a long restless stretch of dirty brown, surges up to meet it; crashes wetly as the waves hit the shore, slapping against the sand, and a lone bird squawks as it battles the unkind wind whipping the water into ripples. The rain’s left the pavement damp and runs down the window, leaving the view outside warped.

A bright, spidery flash of white fractures the purpling sky. Paul looks out the window from his seat on the windowsill doubtfully.

“Hate storms.”

John nods. “I know that, son. You remember that-”

“Time last year?” Paul finishes. “When I-”

“You missed a gig because you wouldn’t leave the house?”

A slight touch of red colours Paul’s cheeks as he smiles. Well, one cheek – the other one’s a delicate shade of purple, having gone past the angry red stage and ready to progress to yellow. Like a traffic light. There’s a small cut just under his eye, one that’d bled like a gunshot wound and scared John half to death, and while it’s healing John still catches Paul touching it and wincing every now and again. “It’s the thunder. Can’t stand it.”

“Daft get,” John says, because he knows the reason why and making fun of Paul is better than thinking about said reason. In fact, even that’s becoming hard to do because every time he looks at Paul with his swollen, painful looking cheek, he’s looking at a sixteen-year-old with a fractured wrist and stitches on his hairline and a split lip sat on his bathroom floor with no more tears to cry. And it hurts.

Paul seems to sense his unhappiness and leans his chin on his hand, looking John intently in the eyes. “I’m alright, y’know. You’re the one you should be worrying about.”

That’s a load of crap, because John got a bloody nose and a bit of a sore face and maybe it did hurt for a while, but he wasn’t the one who woke up that night whispering at people to stop and to leave him alone because it hurts and what did he do wrong?

“I-” John trails off. “I’m fine. You look like a Picasso gone wrong.”

Paul cocks his head and makes a disapproving face. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but thinks twice about it, sighing deeply instead. For a brief moment he looks a lot older than his nineteen years. Something awful and dull aches inside John, some longing to be able to take that expression off of Paul’s pretty little face, but the right joke just won’t form; the words won’t present themselves. Instead there’s just a choked feeling in his throat like tears.

“C’mere,” Paul says finally, smile flickering onto his lips, and gestures to the chair beneath the window. “Your hair’s soaking. Get us a towel.”

John, like the good lad he is, fetches a towel. “Here,” he says, chucking it in Paul’s direction. “You look like little Lord Fauntleroy sat up there, y’know.”

That gains a laugh, at least. “Says you. You grew up in Woolton,” Paul jibes, putting on an affected middle class accent and a stately sort of posture for the last sentence. His resemblance to Mimi is uncanny. “Two bathrooms an’ all.”

“Aye, I felt right posh shittin’ in ‘em.”

John sits on the chair (and tries not to think about that time they fucked on it) and Paul plants socked feet on either of his thighs, getting to work with the towel. Again, John reckons this is one of those contact things, that little need Paul has to be close to John sometimes, maybe for reassurance, or maybe just because he likes being around John. Hopefully it’s a mixture of the two. John isn’t complaining – in fact, it’s quite endearing. Perhaps if it were somebody else it might feel clingy or annoying but of course, it’s Paul, and John just couldn’t bring himself to find Paul either of those things, which is probably unhealthy. But since when has anything John Lennon’s done been good for him?

“You’ve got your thinking face on,” Paul says softly from above him, pausing in his towelling, startling John back to reality.

“What’s that look like, then?”

“Well,” Paul hesitates, presumably to think up some unflattering way of describing it, “you just kind of- zone out. I don’t know.” The touch of red comes back. “Your face just goes blank, an’, an’ you look proper clever. Like a proper writer or somethin’ like that, thinkin’ up the plot to his latest book.”

John’s halfway to blushing now. He never could take compliments from Paul, perhaps because he knows they’re genuine. “Almost. I’m thinking about-” He pauses dramatically, waiting for Paul to fill in the gap.

“Tits?” Paul guesses, grin on his face, playing along, and John claps his hand delightedly.

“Always, lad. Always.”

-

“What would you do if the ship landed on a desert island, like?”

“I dunno. I think it would go all Lord of the Flies, sacrifices an’ shit.”

Paul giggles into his scarf. “You’d be Piggy.”

“Oi! I’ll ‘ave you for that!”

-

It’s lovely weather when they get back into England. The sun filters through the orange remnants of the tree leaves and for once it’s something other than fucking freezing, mild enough for John to feel slightly uncomfortable in his coat. Paul’s scarf is bunched in one of his hands, tassels brushing the station platform as they wait for the train back up to Liverpool.

“Finished your coffee?” Paul asks, gesturing to the paper cup in John’s hand. The backlight brings out the undertones of red in his hair, shining on the loose curls he manages to make look so effortless (despite the fact he sleeps with curlers in).

“Aye. Tasted like arse.”

“Would do though, wouldn’t it?” Paul replies placidly, tossing the cup at a bin and missing. An old woman glares at him furiously, and Paul gives her a ‘fuck off’ look in return. “So, where shall we go next?”

“Well, we’ve done France and Germany… what about Italy?”

Paul raises his eyebrows, considering it, and then puts on an awful mockery of an Italian accent, like an Al Capone impersonator who’s not being payed enough. Then they’re off, playing daft at each other and ignoring the old woman who’s still staring at them, laughing like schoolboys as the train chuffs into the station.

John brushes his hand against Paul’s as they board, and for a split second they link fingers before Paul winks at him and beats him to the last seat.

-

The docks have never looked so boring. Long ago, John would walk down them, see the familiar bob of greased up DAs and dull shine of leather in the sun, and cling to Mimi’s skirt like he’d get stabbed if he went within five feet of the lads patrolling the pavements. The Mersey would seem miles and miles wide to him, flat and shimmering, the tall brown buildings towering, the milling dockworkers idols in his six-year-old eyes.

Now, walking through them with an equally unimpressed looking Paul, they’re the leather clad, greased up (wannabe) Teds, and the square of the Albert Dock is so familiar it’s become slightly underwhelming. He yawns and then makes a face at a passing boy, who just about shits himself.

“Want to go chip shop?”

“Nah.” Paul shifts his duffel on his shoulder. “Got to go an’ drop me stuff off first. My arm’s killin’ me.”

They fall back into silence again, and John’s hit with the sudden, intense longing to get back to Hamburg, the loud, sweaty din of the bars, the fast girls, the sticky adrenaline of it all. Five minutes back in Liverpool and he’s sick of the blandness. That and the fact that the people he knows here all piss him off in their own special ways. He makes a mental note to tell Alan to book another stay over there because Christ, if he has to stay in this city with Cynthia and Mimi and the idiots dirtying up perfectly good pubs for more than a few months he’s going to go stir crazy.

“Come on, we’ll miss the bus if we don’t hurry up,” Paul says as they pass a couple of younger lads having a scrap. John glances at them fondly. He was like that, once.

They don’t miss the bus – in fact, they’re ten minutes early for it, and by the time it pulls up Paul’s tried and failed to make conversation enough times to tip him off to John’s oncoming Bad Mood. They take their usual seats at the back, uprooting the four teenagers already sat there and glaring at any of them who have the gall to try and put up a fight, although Paul pointedly leaves a seat between them to sit against the window. They ride in silence and John channels his unfounded irritation into his best threatening face at the ringleader of the group who keeps doing the wanker gesture into the aisle so John can see. His hair is in a very poor imitation of a DA and he’s got a decidedly ugly snub nose, but it doesn’t stop the other boys from sniggering like idiots every time he makes a remark. He won’t be laughing soon – John’s very aware of his name and his school, which at least gives him enough satisfaction to stop him striding up there and giving him a smack.

At last the bus pulls up at Woolton. John very deliberately jostles the boy as he passes him, earning a look from Paul which sends him further spiralling into his Mood.

“Alright,” Paul says when they’re halfway down the road. He’s left a space between them again, maybe just to make John feel bad. “What’s wrong? You’ve been acting off since we got back.”

“It’s nothing,” John replies sulkily, in that manner that says _of course there’s something wrong, but I’m going to make you work to find out because I’m a bastard like that and can be a right annoying sod when I’m in the mood._ “What’s it to you?”

A smile pulls at Paul’s mouth briefly, and then flickers back to his usual straight face. “No reason. I won’t ask any more, then.”

It’s childish, John’s childish, and they’ve been through this little routine many times before. Paul knows how to play it out. John manages thirty seconds of boots clicking on the pavement and Paul’s feigned impassiveness and then he’s blurting it all out. Paul’s smiling in that knowing way, nodding sympathetically where it’s due, and John suddenly wonders what he’d do without him.

“S’just… proper fuckin’ boring here, innit?”

“Mm,” Paul agrees, because sometimes all John needs is someone to agree with him.

“All the people, the places… we’ve met ‘em all. We’ve been everywhere.”

“Maybe,” Paul starts, running a hand through his hair, “maybe one day we’ll move somewhere else. London. New York. An’ then you’ll be complaining about how much you miss little ol’ Liverpool, watch this space.”

“Maybe,” John concurs sullenly, but his mood is lifting. The green shape of Mendips is coming into sight, and he realises that he’s missed little Julia and his cousins, and, even if he will deny it to his grave, Mimi a little. Paul is giving him a sideways look with an amused expression on his face. John sticks his tongue out at him for staring and suddenly, maybe it’s not so bad after all.

-

An hour later the sun’s going down, painting the sky all washed out purple and orange, proper spectacular, like. The tree in the front garden rustles in the breeze. A magpie flits across the sky and John salutes automatically before going back to aiming his cigarette ashes out the window and into a flowerpot beneath.

“I feel neglected,” Paul complains from the bed. He’s fucked out, limp, pink across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, and a tiny smear of come has dried on his forehead. “Give us a cuddle?”

“Hold on.”

“Or at least a go on that fag, if you’re not done with it.”

John turns and holds his gaze, straight faced, as he flicks the butt out of the window, just for a cheap laugh. Paul rolls his eyes. He’s so gorgeous, John thinks vaguely, so incredibly breathtaking lying there in the fading light with an unshaved face and, more importantly, no clothes on. Makes John want to wrap him up and put him in a glass case so only he can see him.

“Alright, love, calm down,” John says affectionately as he pulls his jumper off. “I’m not going anywhere, y’know.”

“Yeah.” Paul sounds a little funny, choked, but John doesn’t think much of it. “I know, Johnny.”

**Author's Note:**

> any further sequels will be spontaneous, because i don't really have any plans atm. anyway hope you enjoyed, leave a comment if you want to!


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